METALS AND BEADS.[ToList]
This passage tacitly implies that at that time a Greek colony had long since held possession of the town, and according to Strabo's testimony (XIII. i. 42), such a colony built Ilium during the dominion of the Lydians. Now, as the commencement of the Lydian dominion dates from the year 797 B.C., and as the Ilians seem to have been completely established there long before the arrival of Xerxes in 480 B.C., we may fairly assume that their first settlement in Troy took place about 700 B.C. Now, there are found no inscriptions later than those belonging to the second century after Christ, and no coins of later date than Constantine II., but very many belonging to Constantine the Great, who, as is well known, intended to build Constantinople on that site, but it remained an uninhabited place till about the end of the reign of Constans II., that is till about A.D. 361. Since the accumulation of debris during this long period of 1061 years amounts only to six and one-half feet, whereas we have still to dig to a depth of forty feet, and in places to forty-six and one-half below this, before reaching the native soil, how many years did it require to form a layer of forty to forty-six and one-half feet? The formation of the uppermost one, the Greek layer of six and one-half feet required 1061. The time required to cover the foundations of Troy to a depth of forty-six and one-half feet of debris must have been very long. The first layer of from thirteen to twenty feet on this hill of Hissarlik belonged to the Aryan race, of whom very little can be said. The second layer was formed by the Trojans of Homer, and are supposed, by Dr. Schliemann and others to have flourished here about 1400 years before Christ. We have only the general supposition of antiquity that the Trojan war occurred about B.C. 1200, and Homer's statement that Dardanus, the first Trojan King, founded Dardania, which town Virgil and Euripides consider identical with Ilium, and that after him it was governed by his son Erichthonius, and then by his grandson Tros, by his great-grandson Ilus, and then by his son Laomedon, and by his grandson Priam. Even if we allow every one of these six kings a long reign of thirty-three years, we nevertheless scarcely carry the foundation of the town beyond 1400 B.C., that is 700 years before the Greek colony.
During Dr. Schliemann's three-year excavations in the depths of Troy, he has had daily and hourly opportunities of convincing himself that, from the standard of our own or of the ancient Greek mode of life, we can form no idea of the life and doings of the four nations which successively inhabited this hill before the time of the Greek settlement. They must have had a terrible time of it, otherwise we should not find the walls of one house upon the ruined remains of another, in continuous but irregular succession; and it is just because we can form no idea of the way in which these nations lived and what calamities they had to endure, that it is impossible to calculate the duration of their existence, even approximately, from the thickness of their ruins. It is extremely remarkable, but perfectly intelligible from the continual calamities which befel the town, that the civilization of all the four nations constantly declined; the terra-cottas, which show continuous decadence, leave no doubt of this.
The first settlement on this hill of Hissarlik seems to have been of the longest duration, for its ruins cover the rock to a height of from thirteen to twenty feet. Its houses and walls of fortification were built of stones, large and small, joined with earth, and manifold remains of these may be seen in the excavations. It was supposed that these settlers were identical with the Trojans of whom Homer sang, which is not the case.
All that can be said of the first settlers is that they belonged to the Aryan race, as is sufficiently proved by the Aryan religious symbols met with in the strata of their ruins, both upon the pieces of pottery and upon the small curious terra-cottas with a hole in the centre, which have the form of the crater of a volcano or of a carrousel, i.e., a top.
The excavations made have sufficiently proved that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the debris of the first settlers (which is from 13 to 20 feet deep), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings. Their debris lies from 23 to 33 feet below the surface. This Trojan stratum, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, which rise from 5 to 10 feet above the Great Tower of Ilium, the double Scæan Gate, and the great enclosing Wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo, and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great the heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone upon the road leading from the double Scæan Gate down to the Plain; for when the road was laid open all the slabs appeared as uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and they have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished by a stratum of scoriæ of melted lead and copper, from one fifth to one and one fifth of an inch thick, which extends nearly through the whole hill at a depth of from 28 to 29½ feet. That Troy was destroyed by enemies after a bloody war is further attested by the many human bones which were found in these heaps of debris, and above all the skeletons with helmets, found in the depths of the Temple of Athena, for, as we know from Homer, all corpses were burned and the ashes were preserved in urns. Of such urns were found an immense number in all the pre-Hellenic strata on the hill. Lastly, the Treasure, which some member of the royal family had probably endeavored to save during the destruction of the city, but was forced to abandon, leaves no doubt that the city was destroyed by the hands of enemies. This Treasure was found on the large enclosing wall by the side of the royal palace, at a depth of 27½ feet, and covered with red Trojan ashes from 5 to 6½ feet in depth, above which was a post-Trojan wall of fortification 19½ feet high.
As Homer is so well informed about the topography and the climatic conditions of the Troad, there can surely be no doubt that he had himself visited Troy. But, as he was there long after its destruction, and its site had moreover been buried deep in the debris of the ruined town, and had for centuries been built over by a new town, Homer could neither have seen the Great Tower of Ilium nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great enclosing Wall, nor the palace of Priam; for, as every visitor to the Troad may convince himself by the excavations, the ruins and red ashes of Troy alone—forming a layer of from five to ten feet thick—covered all these remains of immortal fame, and this accumulation of debris must have been much more considerable at the time of Homer's visit. Homer made no excavations so as to bring those remains to light, but he knew of them from tradition; for the tragic fate of Troy had for centuries been in the mouths of all minstrels, and the interest attached to it was so great that tradition itself gave the exact truth in many details.
"Say now, ye Nine, who on Olympus dwell,
Muses—for ye are Goddesses, and ye
Were present and know all things; we ourselves
But hear from Rumor's voice, and nothing know—
Who were the chiefs and mighty lords of Greece."
Such, for instance, is the memory of the Scæan Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scæan Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double, and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines of the Iliad, it now seems extremely probable that, at the time of Homer's visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended in a direct line from Æneas.
"But o'er the Trojans shall Æneas reign,
And his sons' sons, through ages yet unborn."